Jesse Wolf Hardin (Lone Wolf Circles)

IN-DIG-E-NOUS: adj. 1) Occurring or living naturally in an area; native.
2) Intrinsic, innate.

"We see in the present best efforts of groups of non-Indians an honest desire to become indigenous in the sense of living properly with the land."
-Vine Deloria. Jr. (Sioux historian)

One does not take as good care of a place when they imagine they are only visiting. In this age of constant migration, the best hope for the suffering environment may lie in people of every race and culture settling down and committing to a place that speaks to them, heeding the implorings of its spirit and tending to its needs. The survival of myriad other species, and the future of humanity as well, may hinge on the degree to which we are able to set aside our comfortable habits, preconceptions, and assumptions--and re-become conscious participants, discovering what it means to be native again.

Search and you will find courage and compassion in the acts of animals, contentment in the embrace of shifting clouds or a turquoise sea...and enlightenment in the lessons of a single mulberry tree.

Well-managed orchards are impressive, but the rareness of wild mulberry trees makes them the most special of all:
Seek friends and lovers, causes and careers, places and moments that embody character and meaning--not those that conform best or produce the most.

Hikers who are busy talking may walk right under a tree's branches without noticing its berries:
The entire natural world is constantly trying to engage, instruct, and nourish us. There are lessons, gifts and miracles all around, if only we'd wake up and open to them.

"Mirth First!"
--slogan from an infamously incestuous eco-tribe

Wild, wild, wild! What else can I say? Grab your arm, feel for a pulse! Wildness: that glorious liberatory samba, faith healers and all Gaia's creatures on the path to stay. Not a march of new toys or boy soldiers, and subject to no orders. Boogie to the protest, boogie in front of chain saws, boogie to the untrammeled beach! Rock and roll, stones and biscuits--"this is the real world, muchachos, and we are in it!"

Government & Politics

So the question of our time becomes: how do we manage our collective selves in ways that are personally empowering and Earth honoring? How do we enjoin the politics of interrelationship, without certifying historic systems known for destruction and lies? Certainly the option to participate is voluntary, and should be conditional as well. We should decide when to involve ourselves and when not to, weighing each situation, the possible effect we might have on a situation, and effect that this involvement will have on us.

Home. It's got a good sound to it as it comes out of the mouth, sort of like the involuntary utterance we make every time our lover gently brushes the hair back from our eyes, or we slip into a cool river pool--Mmmmmm! Savor it as you say it, like a bite of the best food, and it comes out hommmme. As the Sanskrit word "Om" is said to be the root sound of all sounds, so is "home" the root condition of all life, even a people traditionally or perpetually on the move. "Chanting home"...